Thursday, September 13, 2012

Provincial party leader approval ratings

Earlier this week, Angus-Reid released its quarterly poll on the approval and disapproval ratings of Canada's provincial premiers (with the exception of Prince Edward Island). Angus-Reid also includes the ratings for the highest scoring opposition leader for each province.

My analysis of the poll for The Huffington Post Canada can be found here.

Angus-Reid was kind enough to provide me with the approval ratings for other opposition leaders. Taken together, this makes a list of 30 leaders. Granted, some of those on the bottom of the list are lesser known leaders with high "Don't Know" scores, but it makes for an interesting nationwide ranking.

Brad Wall tops the list again, with an approval rating of 66%. Alison Redford is ranked second with 55%, while Greg Selinger ranks ninth with 48%. David Alward sits in 10th spot, followed by Kathy Dunderdale at 11th, Pauline Marois at 12th, Dalton McGuinty at 17th, Christy Clark at 25th, and Darrell Dexter at 27th.

If we look at it in terms of ideology, New Democratic leaders have the best average score with 41%. Conservative leaders (including Wall, Clark, Smith, and Legault) average 36%, while Liberal leaders average 32%. Of course, it isn't quite as simple as that - Smith would bristle at being lumped together with Redford, while Clark, Charest, and Legault are difficult to pin down in terms of where they are on the political spectrum. Generally speaking, though, it would be appear that provincial politicians from the NDP narrowly edge out the Conservatives of various stripes, while the Liberals are not far behind. But each camp has their bears and their bulls.

Hopefully Angus-Reid will provide me with this information when they release their next quarterly poll in December. It will be interesting to see who moves up and who moves down.

Christy Clark is a card carrying federal Liberal. She leads a party that's ~2/3 Conservatives and 1/3 Liberals.

I question the wisdom though of lumping provincial politicians together based on federal parties. Jean Charest was the leader of the federal Progressive Conservatives, yet now he's being included with Dalton McGuinty? In a lot of provinces political parties don't translate federally 1:1.

Yeah, I've also heard for example that Darryl Dexter hasn't been behaving like much a dipper over in NS. Speaking of which, Éric, do you plan to do a piece on the new round of CRA polls in the Atlantic provinces?

Thanks Ryan: You took the words right out of my keyboard. Clark and her party are Liberal in name only. They are the BC wing of the CPC party.This poll is interesting though, because it shows the only BC leader farther down the scale than clark is the BC Conservative leader, John Cummins. Even Green Party Leader Sterk beats her.

In the latest Corporate Research Associates poll the NS NDP has been overtaken by a significant margin for the first time since 2006, trailing the Liberals 41% to 31%. I've also asked a few friends back in NS and the general picture I get is that this is a classic case of voters having taken a leap by electing a new party expecting major change, but the result has been more or less the same old, so general disappointment has now taken hold. He's apparently also acted very antagonistically towards the regions that didn't vote for him, or at least the people from those regions seem to feel that way.

He made 65 million dollars in cuts to education. NSP keeps jacking up power rates and he does nothing to stop it. He increased the hst by 2%. He mislead the people of Nova Scotia on the real cost of moving civil servents to different area's on the province. I project a Liberal Majorty from the latest poll released. Check out www.brokenrecordns.ca for why Dexter will lose the next election.

When Nova Scotians go to the polls they will realize that they have no better option then the NDP, someone please enlighten me to how a PC or Liberal government would have performed better, given the circumstances, protecting the environment, social programs, etc, while balancing the budget. Labour law aside, whatever the opposition is griping about, they would have been likely to support the same policies, if not in an ever more draconian fashion. -Taylor

Taylor, as a Nova Scotian, I will be voting to get rid of Dexter. The liberals have MLA's that have performed better than Dexter's MLA. Dexter and his MLA's are really arrogant. Check out the link I added before. Steve Mcneil have been leader since 2007 and he has been getting stronger since. This is an example of what he plans to do when elected. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90kHAo_eZZM&feature=g-user-u

The NS NDP is an example of what the NDP will eventually become if they are the federal government. They may have integrity now, but just like all other parties, they will eventually become arrogant and unaccountable.

No, of course not. Saskatchewan is like BC at least in one respect. Politically they have no middle ground. They swing sharp right when they tire of the NDP and sharp left when they tire of whatever form of Conservative party happens to be popular at that time. They also love them till they hate them and that can happen quickly. I'd give Wall one more term after this, maybe two, and then it's whiplash city to the left again.

Thats not interesting to note, at all. Michaels is very popular where it counts - St. John's. She's also more visible than Ball and the Liberals. Issue is, like most NDPers, her party is nowhere near as popular as she is.

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